Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed that the renewed violence in Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the South Caucasus should be settled “in a peaceful way.” Leaders of the three states held a joint meeting as tensions worsened in the disputed area.

“I am glad to state that the President of Azerbaijan drew
attention to the necessity of resolving the problem peacefully,
and you [the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan] has agreed.
This is, in fact, most important, because there is no greater
tragedy than the death of people," Russian President
Vladimir Putin said.

President Putin met with his Armenian and Azerbaijani
counterparts - Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev – in his residence
in Sochi to discuss the current situation in the disputed
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the South Caucasus.

"We should show patience, wisdom, respect to each other to
find this solution,” the Russian president said. “Of course,
any difficult situation can be resolved if there is good will,
and it seems to me that there is such good will on the part of
the Azerbaijani people, as well as the Armenian nation.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has also showed eagerness to
resolve the conflict through negotiations “in the near future.”

“I hope that in the near future through negotiations,
peacefully, we will find a solution, which will correspond to the
norms and principles of international law, and will conform to
justice,” Aliyev said.

He mentioned that the UN Security Council previously passed four
resolutions on the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from
Nagorno-Karabakh. However, Aliyev said, “for more than 20 years
those resolutions have been on only paper.”

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has said that settling the
conflict is in the interest of the Armenian people and thanked
the Azerbaijani president for willingness to resolve the
conflict.

Responding to Aliyev’s comments on UN resolutions, Sargsyan
insisted that Armenia did fulfill demands and used its influence
to stop military actions. He stressed that back in 1990s the two
sides had agreed that “the conflict has no military solution.”

“If we start blaming each other again, I think, the conflict
won’t be solved for a long time,” President Sargsyan said.

The Armenian leader stressed that “the conflict should be
settled on a compromise basis, using the principles proposed to
us by the Minsk Group co-chairmen [US, France, Russia].”

The Russian president has called on both Azerbaijan and Armenia
to continue negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Putin especially stressed the close relations between Russia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia that stem from “from the past.”

"Of course, we respect all these international formats,"
President Putin said. "We will continue working with our
colleagues. But we proceed from the fact that we have very close
relations. The history is so deep that it allows us to exchange
views frankly on the position and actions to move forward in
resolving all these problems of the past."

President Putin also spoke about the informal meeting with
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President
Aliyev on Saturday, saying that it created good conditions for
Sunday’s three-party talks.

“In the evening [on Saturday] we talked informally. However,
last night we did not discuss business, but we were, nonetheless,
able to talk to each other about other things. We have created a
certain atmosphere to speak frankly about the most complex,
difficult issues associated with regional settlement,” Putin
said.

The violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic – an unrecognized
state populated by ethnical Armenians and completely surrounded
by Azerbaijan’s territories – intensified in late July. It has
already been described as the worst crisis in the area since the
beginning of the century.

The confrontation over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out in 1988 when
the region announced its plans to seek independence from
Azerbaijan and become part of Armenia.

Back in 1991, after Armenia and Azerbaijan obtained independence
from the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh held a referendum, which
approved the creation of an independent state. As Azerbaijan
tried to take the territory under its control, the conflict
evolved into a full-scale war, which claimed lives of 30,000
people.

Since 1994, the disputed region has seen a largely undisturbed
ceasefire, or frozen conflict, even though Armenia and Azerbaijan
de jure are still at war. There has been no peace treaty and the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic remains an unrecognized state.

Russia has been a key mediator in the process of finding a
solution to the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In 2008, Aliyev and Sargsyan held talks with then-Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev, signing an agreement, which called for
a political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.